I recently received a book in the mail from ASCD entitled Never Work Harder than Your Students.”  It has a catchy title which grabbed my interest, and I found there are some great ideas in the book.

However, it got me thinking about the concept of why should anyone have to work harder than someone else (and my thinking can be dangerous - just ask my wife).

Is this in reality how we should be? Don’t others learn by example, and doesn’t this sets a poor one? What signal does this send to parents / students / etc.? Should we condone Bernie Madoff (pronounced “made off,” as in made off with others’ money . . .) making billions by not working hard and using (stealing) OPM (other peoples’ money)? (His story reminds me of a book that I read during my doctoral work entitled The Cheating Culture: Why More Americans are Doing Wrong to Get Ahead. We know it is wrong, but more and more have done it. Isn’t this what we learned from our leaders for many years, e.g., Senators Randy “Duke” Cunningham and Ted Stevens?)

What if our teachers (or our parents) took this attitude with we were growing up? Somehow, this concept doesn’t work for me.

Another concept the author puts forward is how detrimental it is to “fake it until you make it,” that one must change their perceptions and attitude before this will work. This is absolutely true, but most people are not able to do this initially - they must put it into practice and see results before they believe (why do the call Missouri the “show me” state?). Once they see the results they become believers.

So, does someone not do something until they can fully believe in it? What about faith? Again, a sound bite that doesn’t really work.

Another point the author brings up is saying that using a 90 day performance improvement plan doesn’t help in teacher improvement and shouldn’t be used. Putting aside the fact that there are administrators who have no business “administering,” we live in an environment that makes it is nearly impossible to fire a tenured teacher who is under-performing. Sometimes drastic action like a 90-day improvement plan is required to get someone’s attention.

The question I ask is how many times has that teacher been asked to improve, suggested changes, etc., only to continue with the same ineffective teaching / behaviors? What resources has that teacher (or administrator) given to help them become more successful before it came down to a 90-day improvement plan?

In many respects, the impetus behind this is the old “teacher (union) vs. administrator battle” which has been waged for many years. This love-hate relationship boils down to the attitude that most teachers’ unions feel that when someone leaves the ranks of teaching to become an administrator they have joined Darth Vader / the dark side and immediately lose 20 points of IQ!

OK, so I am guilty of sound bite thinking too!

Let’s get real. Administrators are former teachers and (generally) understand what it takes to be successful in the profession. They know (or quickly learn) that things are not perfect and that the system needs changing. However, they can’t tell teachers to stop teaching or students to stop learning while they “fix the system,” and frequently the $$$ isn’t there to make the whole scale changes that are necessary.

We know that sometimes change is slow, but things are changing (and will continue to do so under our new President). However, WE must look to ourselves to do the best we can, improve ourselves as we need to, and have the right attitude. Like President John F. Kennedy said at his inaugural, “Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.”

We, teachers and administrators, have the ability to make changes and be more effective. Let us together improve our teaching and leadership skills by becoming more responsible for our actions. We like to blame poor test scores and a host of other problems on ineffective PD, administration, lack of funding, poor leadership, or the wrong phase of the moon for our not being more successful.

But, doesn’t it really boil down to our not taking responsibility for our own actions?  And when will we learn to do this instead of blaming others for our problems and situation?

The doctor is in . . .